


Right When I Need You

by Louffox



Category: Youtube RPF, jacksepticeye, markiplier - Fandom
Genre: Sort of sad, Sunshine Challenge, Sunshine Project, Week 2, reunited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 07:03:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7498713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Louffox/pseuds/Louffox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sunshine Challenge week 2 prompt: Reunited</p><p>Five years and the end of the world took a toll.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Right When I Need You

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again. It's been a long time. How have you been?
> 
> I don't want to write much of a summary because I don't want to give it away! Just read on, it's a short one! I'm glad I got this out in time- I've had this plot bunny (do people still say that?) bouncing around in my head all week and I just typed this whole thing in an hour in a half. I set a deadline for myself because I've got a 5miler early in the morning, and I'm happy I did it!
> 
> ((However, I don't believe this is of the same quality that I used to be able to write- but I'm only getting started. I have faith that I'll get there. Certainly not immediately, but it will come.))

Mark hit the ground, already breathless, rolling with the blow. His friends-family-fellow humans were hurdling the wall behind him, and a hand caught his shoulder, helping him to his feet. It didn't matter who's hand. Anyone close would've done it. They were a unit. They were the last.

 

The end of civilization had happened in a few basic, short steps. It was obvious that it was coming- the escalation of murder, mass shootings, governments threatening to fall, political leaders wading into the deep of corruption and hate, the average person fighting back in all the wrong ways. Weapons, hatred, death, anger. Revenge upon revenge. It didn't take zombies or aliens or divine wrath to end civilization. They did it to themselves.

 

Mark wasn't sure if the pursuing group were religious radicals, looters, cannibals, the dregs of some military, or just another unit trying to survive using offense rather than defense. He just knew it was in his best interest to flee.

 

The world was breath and step and pressing forward. They cleared the town and hit the forest without slowing. They knew the drill. Even when it seemed safe, add another mile or so to be sure.

 

When they regrouped, they patted each other on the back and clasped hands, their adrenaline dripping away with laughs and smiles. No losses. They were good.

 

They had been doing this for five years.

 

Five years of fear and camaraderie and looting and being hungry and being fast-footed. Five years since he'd used the Internet or a phone or even a light switch. Five years since he'd spoken to his friends and family.

 

His group moved on for another few miles at a brisk walk- no need to run and burn energy that would need to be replaced with their ever-meager supply of food. They set up camp at the bottom of a hill, choosing shelter and concealment over the high ground. They discussed where to move next, what progress they were making, how their resources were faring. They didn't have a leader. This wasn't the Avengers initiative, they didn't need a face to represent their group, they all simply discussed everything together, and those who wanted to speak up could.

 

Five years of dangerous nomadic life had done well at natural selection. The only people who remained were logical, able-bodied, and intelligent. And after seeing civilization collapse from disagreeing and bickering, folks were weary of argument. Decisions were made with relative ease.

 

He slept on hard ground without a second thought. Some folks carried quilts or blankets to lie on. One troubled teenage girl slept in a cardboard box she unfolded, constructed, and deconstructed with every sleep. Mark had a thin yoga mat that was lightweight to carry, but just thick enough to make the ground tolerable. He didn't need comfort- 'comfort' was a mythical state that everyone dreamed of but never imagined reaching again- but he did need to be ready to go at a moment's notice, not aching and limping.

 

Five years ago, he fell asleep each night on a queen-sized mattress with his phone in hand, usually in the middle of texting with friends. When the phones went down and the power went out and it became clear that cities were on the descent as well, he fled. Living in nature, hiding and fearing and scavenging. And he met someone. She was half crazy and very strong and incredibly smart. Rather than falling asleep texting friends on a mattress, he fell asleep whispering to his new friend on yoga mats. She had survival skills born of a unique upbringing, with a paranoid survivalist father and an absent mother. She knew how to make a bow and arrows and how to use them, how to find shelter and water and meat and fruit. She had little sense of humor, but sometimes she found something Mark did funny, at which point she would burst out in an almost violent laugh. She taught him to survive. She gave him hope. She made him feel like life was one big quest, through the ruined world to reach a safe haven, where he would find security and his friends and a future. Her name was Daisy. He loved her only as he'd loved once more before, with all his self and with painful separation and regret.

 

He rose with the sun and rationed out his breakfast, and went and sat with the dawn's watchperson to wait for the others to wake. Let them sleep, they needed it.

 

She was dead. Daisy was dead, and it was from a stupid accident. A stupid way to die, a way anyone could’ve died. Not the way someone like her deserved to die. They were scouting an abandoned house for supplies and she fell through a rotten floor. Looking down on her broken body, he silently said goodbye. To her. To games and quests. Goodbye to the future and security. Goodbye to his family and friends. He finally saw the reality of it all. There was no castle at the end waiting for a prince or a plumber, no restarting the level when you died, no increasing stats or adding abilities. There was no going back, only forward- and forward wasn't an ending where he got everything he lost returned to him.

 

When everyone had come awake and eaten, they set off. They were able to talk, for a change, during this stretch- they were finally far enough from the nearest towns that they felt it was okay to be anything less than silent. They traveled for a few days in this manner, headed somewhat easterly. They had enough supplies to carry them through the desert, and were trying to get to the rockies. It was early spring, a good time to pass the desert regions, and the shade and cool of the mountains would lend them protection from the coming summer.

 

They talked about death fairly regularly- that is, whenever someone died, which was fairly regularly. Some thought this was a bad practice, theorizing that to speak of their own death was to invite their own death. Some were superstitious and saw it as bad luck. Others somehow didn’t yet have the emotional callus to be able to handle the topic without despair and loss. Mark believed it was healthy. He knew he would die- tomorrow, in a month, in six years, in eighty- and felt comfort in being prepared. They talked about the theories of what a person went through while dying- euphoria, agony, numbness, panic, enlightenment. They talked about the different ways they could die. They talked about the ways they really didn’t want to die, and the ways they wouldn’t mind.

 

Mark had always thought he would die surrounded by friends and family, and his life would flash before his eyes. His achievements and shortcomings would be weighed. He wasn’t sure whether he believed in an afterlife- five years ago, he hadn’t, but he had a new perspective of the world now and couldn’t help but  _ want _ to believe. Perhaps it was the engineer in him, but he liked the egyptian concept of the afterlife. One’s soul being weighed against a feather. The mental image of brass scales and a white feather was appealing. And scales seemed much more logical than a host of judges, or one great judge, or reincarnation. He really hoped it wasn’t reincarnation- he wasn’t sure he wanted to return to this world. 

 

They were crossing the desert. One of their group made a joke about wishing it was dessert, not desert, that they were entering. They fell into a somewhat lethargic silence after that.

 

And then he was falling through the air, thinking this must’ve been how Daisy felt. The ground, such a stable and reliable thing, like cell phones and light switches and waffle irons had been reliable once- collapsing. Everything fell away and it was just him.

 

The ground reappeared with a violent sort of suddenness, like it was trying to make up for being gone. He slammed into his shoulder, hip, knee, foot. He was dazed, vision faintly blurred, but saw people around him. Some were lying prone like he was. Others were even more still. Some were staggering upright with a franticness that Mark caught like a disease.

 

There was a loud noise and then he knew he wasn’t getting up.

 

He could feel the holes. Places where important things should’ve been, but were now torn and split and shredded. A bullet spun as it moved, ripping through muscle and organs and vessels. There was pain and heat and a dampness. His own blood felt hot on his skin.

 

He laid back down. There was still more noise, of guns and voices, the sounds of a world he was leaving behind. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but he knew he wouldn’t be there anymore.

 

His life did not flash before his eyes, but his sight swam. He knew the effects that massive blood loss could have on a person’s brain. Sparks and dark blotches and distorted images. Was the fighting over? He couldn’t tell what was real.

 

It wasn’t simply agony or euphoria or numbness. They were wrong, but they were also right, because it was every emotion he’d ever experienced. Pain, the damage of his broken body. Numbness as it left him in a burning tide. A certain disappointment that it was ending, like getting to the last page of the last book in a series you were very invested in. Relief, that it was done. Confusion for what was coming next, and euphoria for it all to be behind him and to start whatever would follow, anger that he didn’t get more than this. Sadness that he didn’t die with his friends and family, but in a dark hole he’d fallen into in the desert. 

 

Dessert? No, desert. Final meal, pay the bill, leave. Getting gone.

 

He wanted to puzzle out what had happened, get some closure. He had fallen. There were people with him- Bob and Wade and Ryan and Matt and Dan and Arin and Suzy and Jack- no. Not them. Others. He had fallen. Into what? There were people down here. Other survivors. They had guns, they had an underground shelter. Who? Why? Were they-

 

It didn’t matter. He was getting gone, paid the bill, pushing in his chair.

 

His shattered senses focused on the face above his. How nice. It was Jack. Jack had come to him in the end.

  
Mark didn’t know what he was saying. It sounded comforting and sad all at once. Maybe that’s what death was. Comforting. Sad.

 

Nice of Jack to finally show up when Mark was dying. Or maybe that’s why he was there- because he was dying.

 

He wanted to go there. Dying. To death. Upwards and onwards, to those brass scales. Would he be heavier than a feather? Would Jack come with him, or was he already there, waiting?

 

He was glad to be reunited with Jack. He felt strongly about this one thing, through all the emotional and physical sensation of death, this he was very incensed about. He wanted Jack to know he was glad. He tried to speak.

 

_ Thank you for coming back to me _

_ just when I needed you _

 

_ I’m glad you’re here with me. _

**Author's Note:**

> Is Jack really there, alive, or is he there in death? Real sad Jack, or dying-hallucination Jack?
> 
> That's not up to me.   
> \-----  
> For those who may be wondering- I have every intention to return to The Stuff of Nightmares. Whether it's to begin posting regularly, or just share what I can, or simply to make an announcement- I will return. There is a long story behind my absence and I'm touched to hear all the concern. This community is really full of lovely people.
> 
> I've wanted to get back into writing for weeks, but haven't quite known where to start! I know I wanted to write a few warm-up bits to get back into character and to chip the rust off my gears, but didn't know where to start getting inspired. And then like a divine sign, the Sunshine Challenge appears! Thank you, Galaxy, for lending me a hand to get back on my feet!


End file.
